Sunday, 7 April 2013

Success Story for East Anglian based Legal Practice

Legal 500 Norwich based legal Practice,
MJP Solicitors, will soon be following the path taken by many of the Country’s
leading lawyers by incorporating their business as a Limited Company.

From 1st May MJP
Solicitors will be creating two new companies – MJP Limited and MJP ConveyancingLimited – with the view to add strength to their already successful national
clinical negligence and conveyancing services.

They will be part of a growing
trend of legal practices taking steps to bring their business into line with
modern day thinking on taxation and succession issues.

According to Solicitors
Regulation Authority (SRA) figures, 2,400 of the 10,973 law firms as of July
2012 were incorporated companies, compared to 1,898 a year before – a rise of
26%.

This move comes on the back of a very
successful year for MJP who have seen their profits treble through the
expansion of their clinical negligence and conveyancing offerings.

David Jones, head of the MJP
clinical negligence team, explains how despite the recent withdrawal of public
funding and some of the worst trading conditions in the business’ history, he
has seen business go from strength to strength:

“Trying to anticipate
trends and careful forward planning has been the key. This coupled
with an investment in IT of over £80K and some focused marketing has helped us
retain a national reputation in helping families all of the country with the
consequences of surgical and treatment failures”.

He adds:

“Many clinical negligence
lawyers receive a bad press, but what is often overlooked is how lawyers like
us have helped to provide a good and rewarding quality of life to many victims
who through no fault of their own have suffered life changing injuries.
I also believe that due to our work we have helped to raise standards within
the health service industry.

Commenting on the recent
withdrawal of public funding and welfare reforms, Mr Jones remains upbeat:

‘Gaining access to legal
services of the type we provide will be more difficult but we have several
options and ideas on offer which will ensure that we will remain highly
accessible to victims who wish to seek advice and support from our team of
specialists.

Another part of the success story
has been high level of growth in the property division of the
business.

“ We have over the past 12
months moved over 5000 clients”, states Head of Residential Property,
David Pett. He adds “that despite the slowdown in the property market, we
have seen over the past 18 months, the level of completed transactions increase
from around 20 to over 200 each month.

Much of the success for
this lies with the “in house’ creation of an online tracking and property log
book IT system. This allows estate agents and clients to track the
progress of the transaction and with our unique Property Log Book we have been
able to offer our clients added value to accompany a very competitive fee
structure”.

Looking forward there exists, as
Mr Pett explains, a positive plan for growth:

“We continue to recruit new
staff and are already looking to expand the business further through careful
acquisition decisions. We are on the constant look out for other providers of
property related legal services that may be looking to be part of the exciting
plans we have for the future. Our aim is to be one of the largest
providers of conveyancing services in this region within the next 5 years”.